


So Would Suffice

by hitlikehammers



Series: The World We Forge Unending [4]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Words Being Too Damn Small Sometimes For The Really Important Things, Black Panther (2018) Post-Credits Scene, Bucky and T'Challa Sharing Similar Trauma, Character Study, Fire and Ice and Metaphors and Meaning, Found Family, Introspection, M/M, Male Bonding, Male Friendship, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War, Shared Life Experience, Slice of Life, Supersoldiers in Love, The Ice Remains, Welcome to the Vibranium Capital of the World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: After waking up, half-frozen, from certain death—the ice, T'Challa finds, never truly leaves.Bucky may know a thing or two about that.





	So Would Suffice

**Author's Note:**

> And here's Bucky and T'Challa, as promised.
> 
> As ever: if you want to start at the _very_ beginning of the tale, post _Civil War_ : [No End To This Thing](http://archiveofourown.org/series/455365)
> 
> If you want to follow some Steve/Bucky learning to feel safe(ish) and heal and be _together_ in Wakanda, pre- _Infinity War_ , as well as having deep meaningful conversations/deep meaningful snark-battles with Shuri, Nakia, and T'Challa: [The World We Forge Unending](http://archiveofourown.org/series/892896)—ther will be a few more installments before _Infinity War_ in *counts days and is too tired to be accurate because she doesn't know what day TODAY is*, well, in however many days between right now and 25 April. Yep.
> 
> Love, as always, to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad), for, well. Everything <3
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice).

Bucky can’t put a finger, exactly, on what led him out here just now. 

He used to come here often, so maybe that’s it: nostalgia, the crisp-cool of early evening setting in. He’s made a small fire—he’d dug the pit and laid the stones himself what feels like a lifetime ago, when he was what almost feels like a different man. 

Steve’s doing a suit fitting with Shuri, and Bucky smiles, as often he does when he thinks of Steve at all, whether or not Steve's next to him, touching him, or at arm’s length, or a few hours’ hike away.

Because Steve was giddy and pained in equal parts when Shuri had told him it was time to make adjustment to a prototype: wanting desperately to see it and yet knowing how long her exacting precision would take, and Shuri’d just smiled wider, reading it clear on him and taking just a little glee from it as she’d said _Payment, Rogers_ and walked onward toward the lab, expecting him to follow without a word.

And it was giddiness, really; that’s what makes Bucky feel warmer than the fire, honestly. Because Steve’s got that back, that joy—not unburdened and not unbroken, but so much more often than even when they were kids and Bucky’s grateful as fuck for it, he really is, because for all that Steve’s done, and that’s been done to him, that’s happened and that’s been lost, miracles that _didn’t_ come; for all of that? Steve always has some immortal streak of innocence in him, and Bucky’s died a little on his own in fear that it was gone, but here.

Here, it’s clear and bright and Bucky’s blood sings with it.Innocent Steve who’s giddy over his suit and too naive to know the gauntlets go with it and these shields will be his and his _alone_ without conditions or baggage, lighter than air and deadly when they need to be, and pure safety when they need that too. And Bucky imagines their reveal, T’Challa probably presenting them to him, or Shuri simply placing them with the rest of the ensemble without a word, or maybe T’Challa will be cheeky about it, saying something like _What’s a captain without his shield, after all_ or something—

“Actually,” and Bucky spins—he’d heard the approach, but hadn’t fully registered it; hadn’t expected anyone to speak, either, though he isn’t sure why. He’d known the weight of the footfalls, and who they belonged to. And anyone who recognized their owner and bought his _regal restraint_ act simply didn’t _know_ him.

And Bucky’s lucky, really, to be someone who _does_.

“I envision it more authoritatively, something a bit like,” T’Challa flips immediately from casual to something sharper, harder: farce, here and now, but so close to what the truth looks like Bucky can’t help but smile slyly despite the way his mind’s focused on just how the _fuck_ T’Challa knew what he was thinking—because _damn_ , the man’s a force of nature.

“Get this man a shield!” T’Challa commands, addressing his hypothetical audience, pointing instructively, powerfully toward an obviously-not-present Steve before dropping the act. 

“And perhaps it will be in front of the people who have not seen him in quite some time?” T’Challa goes on setting the scene, gesturing to the trees nearby dramatically: 

“And he will emerge, mysteriously, from the shadows to further underscore my,” T’Challa throws his tone back to steel, pomp, and circumstance as he gives a dip of his chin that’s somehow more significant than a theatrical bow from the waist: 

“ _Authoritative_ declaration.” 

And Bucky shakes his head with a grin, but then he’s reminded that T’Challa came up behind him to basically read his fucking _mind_ , so:

“How did you—”

“I am Warrior King of Wakanda, woke twice to the Djalia and back again from the ancestral plane to this world,” T’Challa proclaims, spreading his arms wide in an all-encompassing gesture. “Of _course_ I know what you are pondering in your innermost thoughts and musings.” 

Bucky might not be an assassin anymore, but he’s been a spy long enough, and a sniper longer still—he can keep a straight fucking face and a steady gaze. And yes, okay: if he didn’t _know_ T’Challa, he might even be tempted to _believe_ some of that bullshit.

But too bad for the King? Bucky’s not stupid, and he has seen T’Challa sprawled on the floor from one or twenty of Shuri’s practical jokes—and the recordings of them, that she _never_ deletes—so yeah. No dice.

“You sometimes mumble to yourself when you think you are alone,” T’Challa finally shrugs, glancing at Bucky from the corner of his eye as he moves forward a step. “I can read your lips.”

Oh. Well.

Shit, then.

He hadn’t even realized it, and Bucky should have known, should have been aware—but then, maybe it’s because he’s comfortable here, feels safe among his fellows and friends, close-on to family at this point for some of them and maybe it’s not just Steve who’s grown lax, and careless, and a little bit free here. And for all that Bucky’s seeing it, relishing it in Steve, he hadn’t considered, never _dreamed_ , even for all that happened, all that’s changed, all the ways that _he’s_ changed—

Bucky isn’t so naive to think _he_ has any innocence left, but. 

“You’re kind of an asshole.” 

That is something he doesn’t have to be naive at _all_ to think, hell—to _know_.

“You wound me,” T’Challa says without any inflection at all, a half-hearted hand to his chest and a roll of his eyes before dismissing the point and moving on with his...monologue?

“My authoritative declaration will, of course, set the stage for my beloved sister to unveil her current passion project.”

Oh, right. Not a monologue. An _authoritative declaration_. 

“Because you were so cruel to take her true love from her,” T’Challa tacks on with a quirked brow.

Bucky sighs; it’s not that he’s not grateful, and unutterably so at that, but:

“How many redesigns to this thing does a man _need_?” he asks, nodding toward his left shoulder where it sparkles gold in the joins of the vibranium with the setting sun.

“You do know she is still sketching plans for the _next_ upgrade to your arm?”

Bucky snorts.

“Of course she is.”

Because she’s Shuri. And _of course she is_.

“May I join you?” T’Challa gestures toward Bucky’s tiny fire.

“It would be my honor.”

“Oh, stop it,” T’Challa chides, but it’s with a grin; “your sarcasm is no good here.”

“You almost had me,” Bucky volleys back; “delivery was sarcastic. Sentiment was genuine.”

And that’s the god’s-honest truth, too. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“On the contrary,” Bucky smirks, and leans back on the heels of his palms. “I have found it’s gotten me a hell of a lot of places.” He winks, and T'Challa chuckles. 

“That I do not doubt,” T’Challa’s grin turns sly as he queries with the most believable innocence in the world, which is how Bucky already knows to be wary.

“Much like the story of the woman and the icebox, was it?”

Oh my god—the _freezer truck_. There was enough of that entire encounter that more than qualified it to just be shunned from Bucky’s consciousness at large, but the _one_ not-completely-horrifying-and-terrible thing had been that goddamn story, and Jesus _Christ_ , but:

“That was the absolute worst possible example and I still feel vaguely offended that Steve chose _that_ story as what might have been the last memory we ever shared with one another. I don’t even care that I was still partially—”

“Partially?” T’Challa cuts in, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Fine, _significantly_ fucked in the head.”

“I was going to say _lovelorn_ , and disagree with the _partially_ , but.”

“Mmhmm,” Bucky says, only partially buying the correction. “Still. It was insulting.”

“Because you wished for something more sentimental,” T’Challa prods; “or because you wished to be remembered in what could have been your last moments as far more suave than you actually are?”

“Oh,” Bucky’s hand goes to his chest, a mockery of T’Challa’s own dramatic flair just minutes before. “But now _you_ wound _me_.”

“You have to read the intent between the words,” T’Challa tells him. “He did not know your feelings yet, not with certainty. You doubted his, in turn. He chose to relate a memory in which you were trapped in close quarters for, how long was it?”

Bucky bites his lip. “Hours.”

“Hmm, yes. Odd memory in itself, but perhaps not when you think about it,” T’Challa grins knowingly; “just a little harder.”

And maybe…

Well. _Maybe_.

It’s water under the bridge, mostly, by now. Because Bucky knows love in his bones, and knows it _returned_ without relent, and a fucking freezer truck a century ago is nothing in the face of that.

“There is a chill on the air,” T’Challa says, once the quiet between them stretches a little.

“Hence the fire,” Bucky nods to the ebbing flames.

“Mmm,” T’Challa hums, stretching palms toward the heat. “I find I am,” he pauses, before pressing on:

“Reluctant to embrace the cold.”

And Bucky had been unconscious, frozen himself when T’Challa had experienced his own submerging in the cold, but Bucky’s heard stories, told with just a tinge of wonder—but Bucky’d felt his own undercurrents, and never knew how to ask if they were felt beyond just his own rocky history with the ice.

Seems he should have.

“Does she know?” Bucky asks. Nakia is not often in the country, but when she is, she is next to him more hours than she isn’t. And she is his warmth, and in the face of the ice, that is necessary.

“I am sure she suspects,” T’Challa says, and Bucky appreciates that he doesn’t try to sell anything more than that; anything more _intentional_ than that, and it speaks to what it means that _this_ conversation is happening at all. 

“But she is away, as you know.”

She is. Right.

“I can go up and see if M’Baku can rustle up some warmer duds for you?” Bucky offers idly, casually; “I’ll say they’re for me.”

And they both know it won’t happen, T’Challa wouldn’t want it and so Bucky wouldn’t do it—but that’s not the point.

“The White Wolf?” T’Challa says, raising a brow. “Averse to the _cold_?”

Bucky chuckles, because that’s what they do, how they keep things light: Bucky learned that when they fought in those early days, sparred and with T’Challa demanding who he was, what he fought for—they don’t pull punches. They don’t veer toward _easy_ when they stand in the hard places, when they live in the world. Not everyone knows Bucky’s story, here, but Bucky stopped being afraid of it a long time ago—afraid of what would come if they did. They know he doesn’t go into the mountains too high when he doesn’t have to—doesn’t avoid it outright, but doesn’t seek it like one might suspect and yeah, it’s complicated, the way the cold burns him and calls him all at once, but it’s who he is, and it’s what he does, and T’Challa doesn’t sugarcoat it, nor does he leave out the strangely facetious-yet-nearly-legendary status that comes with the name so many here know him by—complex layers of everything important, with just a few short words.

Bucky knows it’s serious, now. Whatever’s going on, whatever led T’Challa out here, to him of all people.

And how the hell’d _that_ happen? _Bucky_ , being someone who _anyone_ would turn to.

“I told you, once, that a warrior knows his own heart,” T’Challa says softly, staring into the flames as they start their slow death into embers. “Mine is uneasy. And I am,” T’Challa stops, his breath hitching on a sharp inhale, and Bucky doesn’t look up for it, because that’s not what this needs. What _he_ needs.

“And I am discomfited by the cold.”

And there are so many things Bucky could do, could say— _can_ do, and will, because this man is a brother of his _soul_ , somehow, for all that could ever possibly mean for a thing Bucky only knows because he met a scrappy, skinny spitfire in back-alley Brooklyn, and what the fuck _is_ a soul, save the thing they never took off the ice and Bucky’s only learned to live again as it’s thawed, but T’Challa? T’Challa is a part of that, T’Challa has a hand in that and Bucky? Bucky’s had the privilege of seeing where his own hands, _both_ hands, can have that place for another soul, and hell.

They need to talk about the _cold_.

“Come on,” Bucky says as he drops sand on the fledgling glow left in his little fire pit. “Steve’ll be done with the fittings by the time we get back.”

“Wishful thinking,” T’Challa huffs, and he’s not wrong—Shuri won’t be done with Steve until long past proper nightfall—but he follows as Bucky starts the long walk back to the city.

“Hot food, warm rooms,” Bucky tempts, wholly unnecessarily. He’s not even sure why he says it, and when that registers—the whole filling-quiet-with-useless-words thing—he sighs deep, and stops.

T’Challa halts, just as quick; doesn’t turn to Bucky, but says nothing, and Bucky knows, in that, that he’s read this right.

Or else: he hopes.

He breathes deeper, before he bothers to speak again.

“You told Steve I was a victim, like your father,” Bucky says, plain and simple fact. “That you’d help me find peace.”

T’Challa turns, then.

“How did you know—”

Oh: but this is serious, and this has gravity and this needs delicate hands—

But one of them has a hand of metal, and one wears claws as easy as fingertips, so maybe that’s it. Why they don’t need delicate hands. 

And maybe just a little because they do know each other, now—know each other _enough_ —and Bucky _cannot_ be expected to let this opportunity slide.

“I am the Winter Soldier,” he says with great aplomb, pulling himself to full height and making a real show of it, all things considered; “ageless ghost of the centuries, spanning time and space from man to wolf, of _course_ I know your most intimate inner thoughts.”

Bucky says it, because he can, and he knows there will be at least a huff of humor for it if nothing more, and he knows even deeper that whatever’s coming? It needs that huff. It’s only going to get heavier, wherever the conversation’s headed.

“I talk to the man I love,” Bucky answers, in truth, and T’Challa’s lips curve upward a bit as he nods. 

Far easier to believe as an explanation, after all.

“You helped me find peace,” Bucky tells him, though it’s no secret; no surprise. “And maybe, I mean,” he swallows; “maybe I can return the favor, and maybe I can help you, because when you find peace, it doesn’t mean peace is going to stay put,” Bucky tries to figure out what he means, what he feels so he can shape it small enough to fit inside words.

“That it’s not going to run away and make you find it again, and keep finding it,” Bucky looks up and meets T’Challa’s eyes without trying to hide anything in his own:

“And it does run. All the fucking _time_.”

And T’Challa; somehow, T’Challa trusts Bucky not to hide anything in _his_ gaze either, and it’s an immediate reaction to just reach out, to place a hand on T’Challa’s arm and hold them both, ground them both in this moment, not _alone_ ; that’s an instinct, and it holds true.

The fact that Bucky warms the hand on T’Challa’s biceps, one of the useful little tricks in his new arm—that he regulates the temperature of his touch to fight off the cold not too much, just enough? That’s something he means. That’s something he hopes it welcome.

T’Challa breathes in sharp, but the exhale is slow, and the tension in him bleeds a little bit 

“It’s not all well, with,” Bucky stumbles, because these kinds of words, these kinds of feelings were always so fucking strong in him, but the words to match were never natural things, never things that could be regulated or controlled with any ease once they started to tumble out but he’s got to try, and more and more often, he does. 

More often than _not_ , these days, he does.

“It’s not all well with my soul either,” Bucky says, words that reshaped and unlocked and rediscovered his soul on the run, on a pilgrimage back _home_. 

And that’s how he knows, now, what it means even deeper. How it fits right _here_.

“But something is. Some things _are_ ,” Bucky says, with all the conviction in him. “And if I know anything, if I’ve _learned_ anything,” he swallows heard around how hard his heart pounds, not for nerves or adrenaline but with _feeling_ : “it’s that that _something_ is a fire you can keep warm around when everything else goes cold. It helps you learn how to go looking, when peace gets away from you.”

And Bucky’s something, some _one_ —Bucky’s fire isn’t without his own bouts of cold, but they match. They give and take, and that’s the point. To know, and to balance through the _knowing_.

“‘Cause you can’t keep out the ice, once it,” Bucky makes himself go there, go back to pure chill and the certainty that there will never be anything else, crystals in his blood and the way he knew precisely the moment his heart stopped being able to pump it, and then to move at all—before his brain would follow and it all went dark; he goes there, and remembers, and compares it to now, to a whole self he’s taken back and settled into so it fits him, so his skin is _his_ again.

“And it hardens you, but sometimes in a way that, it,” and he clenches his jaw, and tries to find any traces of those icicles in the beating of his blood now, and there are none, but his heart pumps surer, now, particularly when it’s under Steve’s hand in their bed, as they sleep and so maybe, maybe—

“Sometimes, it keeps the fire safe. Makes sure that when everything else crumbles, whatever comes next,” Bucky nods, because that’s right, that’s _right_ : 

“It makes sure that fire doesn’t die.”

“And the ice doesn’t go away,” Bucky says, because they don’t sugarcoat their shit. And this isn’t a thing that should be held back or told in halves, anyway, even if they did.

“The ice becomes you, but that,” Bucky sighs, grasps for more words to make it come out _right_. 

“I think maybe that doesn’t have to be bad, or all bad at least, maybe. And the fire, it,” Bucky shakes his head, closes his eyes and thinks of the fire, his fire, all idiot bravery and heart on his sleeve and warm, so fucking _warm_.

“The fire makes sure that the ice doesn’t consume you,” Bucky decides, for words; “that you melt just enough so that the cold is a safeguard, and not something that walls you off from the world, or from _feeling_ , but not so much that the ice that’s _you_ ever dies, either. Because...”

And Bucky trails, because what the fuck does he know? And who the fuck is _he_ to make words for the feeling that pumps his heart every moment of every day? Who is he to claim that place and that right and that task, for his unfragile hands, except—

He can be. He knows how to gentle his touch and to speak with the beat of his blood. He knows. He’s learned. 

He breathes. 

“Because _that_ is the soul, that _has_ to be the soul,” Bucky whispers, with every ounce of his world and his past and his present, all promise of his future: he speaks with that, and hopes like hell it’s enough. 

“And so long as you know it, and you,” he clenches his fists and breathes some more—”let the two feed each other, open yourself to the both and let them play it all out,” Bucky exhales, and feels just a tiny bit lighter for it, now, _finally_ :

“Save each other.”

Bucky trails off, because the rest doesn’t fit into words. It’s too big. It’s too much. He looks up and pleads for T’Challa to understand the words unsaid with his eyes, and finds that precisely staring back: _understanding_.

And maybe a little bit of hope. 

“Look who is the wise one, now,” T’Challa says, and it’s entirely serious. Honest.

Well, shit.

“But,” Bucky protests dumbly; “that didn’t make any damn _sense_.”

T’Challa looks at him meaningfully, hums idly: not buying it.

Huh.

“Well,” Bucky says, slowly, a concession and a question and, fuck, he doesn’t even know, except he _knows_ the words that come next: “I guess I had a good teacher.”

T’Challa nods, but not without a grin. And again: they’re mostly not fragile. They don’t sugarcoat.

And once more, Bucky _cannot_ let the opportunity pass.

“I’ll have to introduce you to them sometime,” he says flippantly as he makes to move, never takes his hand—still deliberately warm—away from T’Challa’s forearm as he does, either; “They could probably teach _you_ all sorts of wise shit, too.”

And T’Challa doesn’t walk away from the warmth of his hand, but he _does_ , somehow, elbow Bucky hard enough for it to goddamn _hurt_.

Like Bucky said, though: T’Challa?

Bucky loves him like family, he really does.

But sometimes he’s an _asshole_.

Probably why they get along so well, all things considered.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
